Site-specific maestros Grid Iron scored a major hit when they knitted together three booze and sex-soaked short stories by Charles Bukowski in the company's local in 2009.
Ben Harrison's equally pie-eyed revival returns to the show's original venue before embarking on a nationwide pub crawl of one-night stands.
With Keith Fleming returning as narrator and Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski and composer David Paul Jones bashing out some woozy piano numbers in a customised Barony, this remains a vivid and sad-eyed evocation of life lived through the bottom of a glass that's frequently smashed, spilt or both.
While Fleming replays his stumblebum routine from last time around with aplomb, as with all of the Bukowski canon it's the women who matter most. Stepping into Gail Watson's tottery heels, Charlene Boyd adds a more youthful frisson to proceedings, be it as self-destructive loose cannon Cass, the snarlingly ferocious Vicki, or Vivienne the posh girl epitome of literary groupiedom who gets a piece of one of the old myth-maker's more magical-realist, if gynaecologically inclined yarns.
Meat is everywhere in Harrison's production, be it the ripped-out liver Henry lays down before his true love, the discarded bag of chickens from his off-the-rails tryst with Margy and her fox fur, or the flesh on flesh as Hank and Cass hold onto each other with increasing desperation for life itself. Harrison's Scots-accented adaptation works better with the pair's sparring than in the monologues, when the original street-smart American rhythms can't help but take over. If there are moments bordering on knockabout parody, they veer just the right side of Bukowskian largesse in a rip-roaring study of wisdom through excess.
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